Posts categorized “Pictures”

Thursday, 22 September 2016

There’s a thing going around the internet right now where you’re supposed to post the pictures of 3 fictional characters that, when combined, best describe you as a person. I think there’s even a couple hashtags for it. Yeah: #3FictionalCharacters or #ThreeFictionalCharacters. Anyhoo, I did one. Here it is without comment:

Sam Weir, Bumblebee, and Balki Bartokomous

Qualifier: Original cartoon Bumblebee only, not any of the other versions of the character.

Monday, 14 March 2016

I actually went out last Friday night! Gasp! And to Seattle, no less. A big thanks to a couple lovely people who dragged old, tired, dad Chris up to Conor Byrne Pub in Ballard to help see off Electric NoNo as they start their latest tour.

A quick note on Sebastian and the Deep Blue (the opening act) first: they somehow managed to cram 10 people onto that tiny Conor Byrne Stage! I managed to get most of them in one photograph, take a look:

All the people, all the lovely people…

You had three different types of saxophones, a trombone, a violin, a drummer, a bassists, two guitars, and one vocalist-only. That’s P.C. (“Pretty Crazy”).

Then up came the Electric NoNo!

Jared+Dom = YesYes

Of course I managed to make a couple of animations…

Take off your shirt, Dom!

I already made a “YesYes” pun, didn’t I?

One thing became extremely evident whilst watching Electric NoNo: The really, really kick ass. And “Lickin’ My Wounds” is one of the best rock songs written in the past couple of decades, really. Take a wissen:

This was a tour kickoff show, right? To where are they touring? Why down to the South by Southwest music festival in Austin, Texas! They’re going to be performing in a showcase of Seattle artists alongside some other extremely awexome peoples:

If I were a religious man I’d say I was “blessed” to have so many kickass musicians in my life.

Thanks for a great show, Electric NoNo, and much good fortune on your tour! If anyone else is going to SXSW, be sure to try to catch the Seattle X Southwest showcase on Friday and the G.O.L. on Saturday!

Thursday, 28 January 2016

Y’know, that great-big Experience Music Project museum thingy up in Seattle? Well, since I actually live in this state and am not a tourist, I’d never actually been there. Until last weekend! But the reason we went this time was not to see all the musics stuffs. It’s because they have a Hello Kitty exhibit, and both my daughter and my niece loooooove Hello Kitty.

It was pretty interesting!

I did not know she lived near London.

The most important part of the Hello Kitty timeline.

Fun fact: the Smurfs are all 2 apples high. So Hello Kitty is 2.5 Smurfs high. I think we should all use “Smurf” as a measurement of height from now on.

My favorite part of EMP, though (to nobody’s surprise), was the Science Fiction Museum in the basement. It has some great artifacts.

O HALLO THERE HAVE YOU HEARD OF OUR LORD AND SAVIOR JESUS CHRIST?

Tiny war of the tiny worlds.

“This is Ripley, the last survivor of the tiny Nostromo, signing off.”

Leeloo Dallas multi-pass. MULTI-PASS.

That pistol on the right was held by Sir Patrick Stewart. That needle tried to stab Agent Dale Cooper.*

Darryl Hannah wore this Pris outfit on our first date.*

They also have fantasy and horror sections, which are inherently less interesting to me, but there were some cool stuffs:

Elderberries smell good.

As the world falls down…

They also had the mask of Hellboy’s personal Death from Hellboy II, but I neglected to take a poto of it.

They also had an Indie Game hall where you can play a bunch of new indie video games, and a Jimi Hendrix exhibit that had a bunch of his suitcases and passports and travel documents and stuffs like that.

EMP is an interesting place! But it’s pretty durned expensive to go there.

Also that episode were Smokey Brights, who were very good! I don’t think I’d seen them before, but they seemed familiar. I think that’s because most of the band members were also in other bands, and I’d seen some o’ those. An unusually cool thing about Smokey Brights is that it is a five-person band (which is unusual in itself these days), and four out of the five sing. There were many songs that featured full four-part harmonies!

I did not manage to take good enough photos to make an animated .GIF out of them. I did, however, make this cool little collage:

A collage both smokey and bright!

So here is probably the most-epic animated .GIF I’ve made yet. It’s of JM+FFD. It’s over 5 MB. And it features subtle camera movements and everything!

The Epicness of Animation!

There you have it. I’ll let you know when this episode of “Band in Seattle” airs.

Whelp, we’re off to Portland for the weekend. We’re gonna go to OMSI and the Oregon Zoo! I’ll try to take mucho de photos and tell y’all ALL about it, ‘kay? ‘Kay!

Friday, 3 April 2015

‘Twas a great music show last night in Tacoma at Grit City Grindhouse! I’d never been there before, and it turns out to be a very cool venue. It’s kind of a warehouse space behind a skate shop. There’s a li’l skate pipe/ramp off to one side in there (a quarter-pipe maybe?) and everything! It was an all-ages show and kids under 10 got in free, so it turned out there were about half-a-dozen kids running around and going crazy in front of the stage for much of the show. It was like a mosh pit for kids. A moppet mosh pit?

There were three music acts. The first one was Pete Jordan and two other members of Cloud Person. The be-bearded Mr. Jordan sounded a bit like a cross between Mike Doughty and folky sea shanties. Sorry I didn’t snap any photos of them, but it was mostly because I was enjoying the music and also because I was distracted by the junior mosh pit in front of me.

Next was Kye Alfred Hillig, who mostly did depressingly-lyric’d, folky, guy-with-acoustic-guitar stuff. But his lyrics were intelligent and very clever and sometimes rather funny. One of my favorite lines was, “My young love was as blind as Ray Charles.” Mr. Hillig also had absolutely excellent between-song banter going on, where he would make an assertive declaration and then immediately say that it was a complete lie. He also made some jokes about how his songs weren’t really kid-friendly. Very funny, and a nice contrast to the mostly-depressing content of the songs.

Wait… you mean that song wasn’t about Clifford the Big Red Dog!?

Third was Julia Massey & half of the Five Finger Discount (only Dom on drums). The FFD is in-between bass players right now. Geoff left toward the beginning of 2015 and they have a new one, but they haven’t played live with him yet. He wasn’t there because he was on a cruise or something lame like that. Pfffft, excuses. Anyway, Julia + Dom is still a great show, and they played TWO songs Carrie & I had never heard before, both of which were excellent.

And, as is my nature, I made an animated .GIF of them for us all to enjoy:

This is one of the better animated .GIFs I’ve made. And check out that great lighting!

So in conclusion: Good show. And it started at 7:00 so it was pretty much wrapping up by 9:00, which was great for a couple of old people who have a baby and need to get up the next day to go to work.

Another conclusion: Good venue. It’s nice to know there is another place in Tacoma where good musics can happen now. Although I’m not entirely sure why there is a painting of Marvel Comics interdimensional supervillain Shuma-Gorath on one of the walls…

Friday, 27 February 2015

At the big musics show last week in Tacoma (the one at New Frontier Lounge), something very suh-weeeet happened. I was taking photos with my phone as is my habit. I did not have my flash on. However, someone else in the audience did. And by sheer happenstance, the two of us took a photo of Trees and Timber at the exact same moment, so that I took a photo using their flash! It looks so neat!

Trees and Timber: a Flashy Band!

You know what we can do? We can solve the mystery: whose flash did I steal? Let’s take a look at that photo. The lead singer of Trees and Timber is wearing a baseball cap that casts a very distinctive shadow. Let’s line from the tip of the shadow’s brim down to the tip of the real person’s brim, and then continue that line down from there. Let’s also do the same with the back of his head. Since the shadow looms larger than his actual head, the two lines will likely converge (or get near each other) at some point.

That’s right! It’s time to…

TRIANGULATE!

(And just for good measure, the big shadow head on the right seems to belong to the guy standing directly in front of the drummer. So let’s draw a line across them, too). Here’s what we get:

Jumpin’ Jack Flash!

The lines converge on that guy in the lower-left! More specifically, they converge on the flash box of the camera that he is holding in his hands. Hey, waitaminute… I know that guy!

That’s musician, photographer, and all-around awexome guy Gary! I took a photo of him that night too… and it’s a photo of him looking at a photo…

Dutch angle, go!

WHAT IF GARY IS LOOKING AT THE PHOTO WHOSE FLASH I STOLE!? My head asplode.

Anyhoo, as is my nature I also made a couple of animated .GIFs of the bands that evening. Voila!

GIF for Jesus Rehab!

GIF for Fruit Juice!

I didn’t get a good .GIF of Trees and Timber or The Hoot Hoots, but c’est la vie.